The heavy rain promised for the second day of the MotoGP test at Valencia never came, the track drying towards the end of the day, allowing almost everyone to get out and put in a number of laps on a dry track. Dani Pedrosa ended the day on top of the timesheets, posting a time underneath the race lap record, a sign that the condition of the track was good enough at the end. Cal Crutchlow ended as 2nd fastest, a third of a second behind Pedrosa, and a little over a tenth quicker than Stefan Bradl, who has just announced a contract extension with LCR and HRC.

A dry track allowed Marc Marquez to make his debut aboard the RC213V, the young Spaniard making a very impressive debut. Marquez built speed quickly, ending the day a little over a second behind Pedrosa after just 27 laps on the bike, and three tenths slower than Alvaro Bautista. Andrea Dovizioso was also quicker than the first day, finally getting some dry time on the Ducati and ending nine tenths behind Pedrosa. Bradley Smith put in laps on both a damp track and in the dry, finishing the day 2.2 seconds behind Pedrosa.

Comments

Well, seeing as how the tests were in mixed weather and no real hard data to go with.............and being no Dovisiso fan..............he did quite a bit better than the last Ducati lead rider at Valencia who qualified what? 2 seconds in arrears. So actually Dovisiso looks pretty good. Then again, nobody expected much from the last Ducati lead rider.

Marquez's arrival in Motogp seems treated by all akin to the second coming, but Pirro's time two hundreds behind MM93 is interesting as is Iannone just another hundredth further back. Yes Pirro, who won his last Moto 2 race just like MM, has had a year on a CRT bike to learn the tyres but Iannone has not. But when we consider that MM93 was on Casey's Honda & these were Pirros first laps & Iannone second test on the much more difficult Ducati just why is it that "Marquez impresses" but Iannone & Pirro rate no mention? David be cautious, you role is to report not to become part of the myth making process.

Iannone has spent at least two days at Mugello on the Ducati. Pirro has spent a day testing the Ducati as well. Pirro completed a total of 84 laps on the Ducati over the two days of the test. Iannone completed 96 laps over 2 days. Marquez completes 28 laps in the space of two-and-a-half hours, and was within a second of Pedrosa.

Don't get me wrong, I am very, very impressed with Pirro's time on the Ducati, he did a fantastic job. I'm sorry he's not racing next year, and think he's going to be a fantastic test rider for Ducati, as he is capable of riding at race speed. But Marquez is in a different league. Call that whatever you like, but everything I've seen from Marquez makes me believe that Shuhei Nakamoto's prediction of a podium at Qatar is entirely realistic.

QP was the only really dry session for the race; Pedrosa put in an absolute blinder of 1:30.844. Let's say, rounding that out a little to allow for the extra impetus of going for pole: a 1:31, so assuming he was giving it a pretty hard go, the optimal track time was around 1.3 seconds slower yesterday.

So if we take 1.3 secs. off the test times, that would put Dovi on the Duc at 1:32 - only about 2-3 /10ths slower than he was on the T3 Yam - not too shabby at all. It would also have put him as fastest Duc in the session by nearly 0.5, and 7th on the sheets displacing Hayden. I think that Dovi's debut time on the Duc is the best 'new little Duccer' we've seen since '07.

Marquez would have (entirely theoretically) done about 1:32.2 ish - 8th fastest - squeezing Hayden back to 9th, and a shade under 0.5 slower than Bradl. About 0.8 slower than that bike's previous rider isn't half bad in the circumstances.

"It would also have put him as fastest Duc in the session by nearly 0.5, and 7th on the sheets displacing Hayden. I think that Dovi's debut time on the Duc is the best 'new little Duccer' we've seen since '07."

I don't think Dovi or Hayden did near enough laps to make that assumption yet. If there's one bike where assuming a rider can easily make improvements is a bad bet, it's the Ducati. Also, based on the Ducati/Hayden times, maybe they were only .5 off their ideal time. Until we have a dry test for several days in a row, it's just too soon to start evaluating the Ducati is doing.

For all the hype we've seen surrounding Marquez this was a less than impressive debut. He was only ahead of a couple of Ducs and Smith on the satellite Yamaha, a rider he's wiped up the floor with in Moto2. On the best bike with an extremely capable crew with Honda doing everything he needs.

>>But Marquez is in a different league.

But only .2 today, that's not that big a gap, especially considering machinery differences. Marquez is going from a series where his team is the biggest spender by far with the near-exclusive attentions of his frame maker to a series that has more than one big spender with a lot more machines of near equal capabilities. He excelled in Moto2 but how much of that is due to the near spec rules and his teams' huge budget doing bike development past what the other teams are capable of? I suspect a decent amount.

Stoner was able to put a 3rd tier bike/tires on the pole and get a podium. Lorenzo finished 2, 3, 1 in his first 3 races on a factory bike. Let's see how Marquez stacks up against the last 2 high profile rookies. Qatar beacons.

What I did was a simple extrapolation using Pedrosa's QP and test times to suggest that the track was slower by that discrepancy, then feed that discrepancy back to the QP times to try to place Dovi's and Marquez's test times accordingly. We can't really use Hayden as the 'norm' for Ducati, since he was riding a different iteration at the test.

Any such extrapolation is pretty wildly unscientific because the circumstances of the QP times was most certainly not replicated. However, I contend that in Dovi's case, for a first ride he was closer to the established performance of the bike than any first-time rider since and including Melandri. I am entirely happy to be proven incorrect, and invite objective analysis that provides a better picture.

My interest in Dovi's performance derives from the fact that, of all the riders changing bikes, the Duc is recognised as the most difficult to extract good times with and pretty much everyone has acknowledged that it carries the portent of a poisoned chalice. Dovi met the qualifications Jarvis laid down at the beginning of the 2012 season for graduating to the factory Yamaha team, but his ace was trumped. Dovi and Crutchlow have turned on a great deal of the most interesting racing this year and I for one hope to see Dovi being able to continue to scrap up towards the front next year; I feel this test indicates he has perhaps a better chance to do that than most of us thought would be the case.

Do the extra laps in your opinion (84 EP, 96AI, 28MM) mitigate the obvious performance advantage of the factory Honda in comparison to the factory Ducati. In my opinion no. Yes Nakamoto is no mug & his prediction is entirely plausable but looking at MM compared to Bradl this time last year on a satallite Honda may be more fruitful. The one thing for sure that one of the most interesting things for next season will be how the leading lights from Moto2 perform in MotoGP. Shame Pol cant play however....

Back to the headline however. MM performed as expected, EP & AI impressed.

It's not the extra laps which Iannone and Pirro did at Valencia that makes the difference. It's the extra testing which Iannone and Pirro have already had at Mugello, and for Pirro, the year he has already spent riding a CRT bike on Bridgestone tires.

The only people in front MM are riders who know the tires and their bikes. He wasn't super fast in this test but for someone who hasn't even done a outlap on a GP bike he's pretty impressive. Can't wait till a dry sunny day( is that possible anymore?) to see some real times. One things for sure, with all these young guns coming up, next year is looking very exciting.